Jerry Seib: The Changing Threat of Terrorism

The attack by extremists on a “picturing Muhammad” event in Texas last week exemplified the changing nature of the terrorism threat. WSJ’s Jerry Seib explains. Photo: AP

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

... so a little bit from last week's attack in Texas on art show bite to ISIS inspired American gunman ... raising the question what have long Forstmann officials learned from this episode now to get to know a little better what happened ... discuss that with Devlin Barrett who follow such things for us at The Wall Street Journal ... here's what he had to say ... have we learned anything from this episode about the nature of homegrown ISIS threats and there were switches or we know all I think we have an ethical we've learned is that the threat is both involving Andy vaulting at the same time you know one of the big questions that came out right after this happened was ... bull ... was were these people directed were they inspired directed well how ... about work ... and frankly I think in some ways a nap everyday person can go on Twitter and see exactly what happened as well as the FBI can because you see the messages back and forth ... between terror suspects and one of these guys ... and ... you know what what I'm told by officials who do see counterterrorism work every day is that ... we were now reaching a point where there are so many people ... in this country who are in some sort of tangential contact ... with bad actors elsewhere ... even if it's just ... weird Twitter Bakken for us ... that is creating a logistical challenges in terms of keeping track of all of these people is thousands of people ... and also you know that the whole definition of being inspired by were directed by this change ... because ... these people weren't public communication ... with with bad actors ... saying we should do something about this ... but saying you should do something isn't really cleared up a lot of times for investigators to take action ... so this is an area growing concern in the US and critique Lee at the Justice Party in the FBI ... I think it's fair to say that the subject of how many people are inspired by ISIS unworthy action and in this country's can be a subject ... for the rest of the sheer Anis certainly be a twenty sixteen presidential campaign talking point ...